This post is a bit of a departure from the library technology stuff I usually post about, but I feel that it is very much core academic librarianship, so probably relevant to some people here.

I was listening to this interview with Eleanor Colla, where she talks (among many other things) about committing to reading one academic article per day. This struck me as a wonderful idea. Some upsides: it will keep me immersed in my discipline(s); it will keep me up to speed on the latest developments in scholarship; it will get me thinking about what makes for good academic writing; it might make me a marginally more interesting person overall. I was sold.

So last week, I started with my own one-article-per-day regimen. So far, I’ve read some anthropology, some political science, and some library studies. It’s been great! I’ve been solely following my interests, with no mercenary professional development or publication agenda of my own at the moment. I’m hoping that, over the medium term, gently steeping in academic writing like this will start to improve my skills as an academic librarian. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll publish the reading list.

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